My main efforts recently have been put towards getting controller support set up. It's unfortunately a bit of a task, and I'm not done yet, but progress is definitely being made! The biggest thing still remaining is that I have some custom UI in the game not using Unity's system that needs to get ripped out and rebuilt in order for this all to go smoothly. I could add support to that system myself, but it will already need to get rebuilt in order for me to add widescreen/dynamic resolution support later on and this feels like a good opportunity to get that out of the way.
Anyways, this isn't a massive update in terms of actual changes, but know that I've also been working on the controller stuff and it just isn't ready for you yet. Things are still getting done :)
Behind the scenes:
- Upgraded Unity. If you know, you know. This was necessary in order for me to add controller support without writing input handling for 50 different controllers myself. It fortunately went more smoothly than it could've, but there were still a slough of fun little issues to fix. At this point I believe it should all be back to normal, but if you see anything wonky please let me know!
Game adjustments:
- Since launch there's been confusion over the fact that the game doesn't explicitly ever pause. The simulation is always running unless you're on the main menu or in the breeding simulation. Where this causes issues is that the game doesn't explain this very well (or at all), and so it's possible to end up in very sad situations where all your dogs pass away from old age while you're staring at some gut flora. Adding a legitimate pause system is not trivial at this point in the project. I don't say this for any reason other than to let you know why I haven't just gone and added it yet. It's still something I think would be nice, but it's a big feature with potential for a lot of bugs. However, in the short term there's something much simpler I can do. As of this patch, when there's full screen UI up or when the background is blurred out, the game "soft" pauses. Dogs will still go around doing their thing, but they will not age, and none of their needs will negatively decay. This means you shouldn't have to worry about them starving, getting bored, or otherwise dying. They can still interact with things, and they can still fill their needs positively (eating, for example). They can also have needs go down if certain interactions play out, for example throwing up or getting bitten by another dog. Hopefully this solves the biggest issue in the short term!
- BactoBacto said it was supposed to increase pattern intensity. It did legitimately do this, but there was more at play here. The game had a system that would make it so young dogs would express patterns more intensely, and then have those patterns fade the older they got. This system was built in such a way that meant that BactoBacto could appear to have no effect, or even the opposite effect it was supposed to. In addition, this system had a bug resulting from when I made some sweeping genetics changes before launch that caused this flora to in some cases actually remove pattern intensity. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to disable this system. The idea was fun but in practice, where players are attempting to craft specific dogs, it was not easy to understand and could easily confuse and frustrate. This may not be a permanent change, but it will stay this way while I re-evaluate.
New Audio:
- SFX have been added to the TV.
- SFX have been added to the fan.
- SFX have been added to the tubes that connect pens.
Bugfixes:
- If you had multiple cocoons, only the first would play its internal ambiance sfx.